Phil Klay's Redeploy

allus Colloquialisms: Understanding

‘Grunt Speak’ in Phil Klay’s ‘Redeployment’

In everyday life, cursing and speaking insensitively are often signs of poor self control and lack of vocabulary but in war, cursing can serve as a psychological defense against the horrors of combat. Military colloquialisms, or "grunt speak" acts as a shell to protect soldiers' sanity from the harsh realities, which constantly threaten to overwhelm them. “Redeployment" by Phil Klay depicts a marine, Sergeant Price, returning home from Iraq with a new vocabulary and family. This new vocabulary and manner of speaking protects the users from traumatic experiences by masking descriptions with brusque and insensitive sounding language and sentences and also

is a way of forming close brotherhoods with one another through the thread of a common language.

Feelings of horror, loss and even joy all become too difficult to verbalize without the use of swear words, which take on new meanings through the repeated use of the same words for different situations. To a civilian, this overuse of swear words can be seen as crass, while to a soldier like Sergeant Price, the use of swear words becomes part of everyday language.

Sergeant Price used the same curse-word in two different contexts, which change the definition of the word itself. When Sergeant Price and the marines have a layover in Ireland for three hours, the men quickly seize the opportunity to drink, "…happy just knowing we can get fucked up, let our guard down." (Phillips, pg. 45) The word "fucked" in this sense denoted a positive connotation, the ability to imbibe and have fun was replaced with one swear word.

On the other hand, as Price prepared to shoot his dog, Vicar, he had begun to describe the affects of shooting and piercing both of the reader's lungs:

"If I were to shoot you on either side of your heart, one shot… and then another, you'd have two punctured lungs, two sucking chest wounds. Now you're good and fucked. But you'll still be alive long enough to feel your lungs fill up with blood." (Phillips, pg. 52)

The meaning of the curse-word 'fucked' in that context had a negative meaning, connoting in mortal trouble and about to drown in one's own blood. The versatility of the meaning of the curse-word for both instances allowed Sergeant Price to substitute words such as happy or dying with a single word.

Throughout “Redeployment”, Sergeant Price peppers his conversation with curses and short, to the point sentences. This is because in urgent and dangerous situations, interactions must be kept short and task oriented in order to pass information quickly which could save either one’s own life or another's life. Descriptions lose relevance as each individual becomes expected to know what basic objects and ideas are.

One instance of Price's use of short sentences when Price and the other marines were reuniting with their loved ones and Price saw his best friend's father approaching him. He observes, "Eicholtz's dad was coming forward” (Phillips, 46) and he had only seconds to react as if Eicoltz's father meant to cause him harm. Even though Price was in a safe environment, he still processed every encounter as if it were dangerous and required only seconds to react because he was used to thinking like a marine in constant danger, not as a civilian who could take longer to process reactions.

Keeping sentences short is a vital part of military colloquialism because it allows soldiers to process information without unnecessary descriptions. When Price reflects on his experience in Iraq, he compares the perspective of a marine fresh out of boot camp to a marine who had been at war for a long time. As one of the insurgent men is dying in front of Price's eyes, he watches an executive officer as he, "walks up, pulls out his KA-BAR, and slits his throat." (Phillips, pg. 44) The short but accurate account allows little room for description keeping the insurgent who had died impersonal as well as his executive officer who had executed him in cold blood. The only reaction Price allows himself is, "What the fuck?" (Pg.44).

Curse-words were not the only words used as shields to protect Price from the horrors of war. When Price sat on the plane remembering his experiences in Iraq, he recalled one instance in "The torture house" where he had seen a victim experimented on. "You see the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage. He squaked like a chicken." (Phillips, pg. 43) Sargent Price's use of an offensive term to describe the man in the cage showed readers his detachment to the situation he was in. He had seen acts of atrocious human experimentation and quickly used a short but unfair description to see the victim as quickly as possible without processing what he had seen fully.

Sergeant Price struggled to address his emotions and instead categorized each state of mind he had both experienced and seen as different colors such as “red” and “white.” (Phillips, 50) As Price was accompanying his wife, Cheryl while shopping for clothes, he defined orange as a way of processing information quickly.

Price stated that he “…could spot a dime in the street twenty yards away.” meaning he was ever vigilant regardless of the fact that Price was in a mall miles away from the battlefield in Iraq. Price was stuck in a constant fight or flight mode as if a gun had just fired in the mall.

And as Price explained his perpetual feeling of anxiety and vigilance, he grew more “amped” (Phillips, 50), or energized, ready to act at a moment’s notice without hesitation. Price’s hyper vigilance became so apparent that Cheryl refused to let him drive back to their home because, “I would have gone a hundred miles per hour.” In the moment, Price’s body and mind was moving so quickly that even the calm task of driving home became difficult. He was stuck in orange with his

platoon.

For civilians, Price noted that they had “…spent their whole lives at white” (Phillips, 50). Meaning that citizens relax calm, having never felt the rush of an improvised explosive devise detonating near them. They were safe and they knew it. On the other hand, those who were at “red” (Phillips, 50) were so vigilant that they quickly become exhausted from their own paranoia and “…crash, go down past white, down to whatever is lower than “ I don’t fucking care if I die.”” (Phillips, 50) Because their hyper vigilance was unsustainable to continue for the seven month deployment.

By labeling states of mind as a color, Price was able to quickly state how he felt and saw others feel without dwelling on the emotions and state of mind that he experienced which he himself could not verbalize even though he had time to contemplate his emotions because he was in a safe environment.

But the words that deter and disgust civilians, brought each soldier closer to one another, to form a tight brotherhood.

When the marines had returned home, Corporal Weissert returned to an empty house without knowledge of where his wife had gone. Rather than let Weissert wallow on the street without a home, the men in Weissert’s platoon took turns caring for their friend and dubbed it, “Weissert duty” (Phillips, 48). The soldiers acted as though they were still stranded in a foreign country with only one another for company and support and shared a common language and their experiences, which civilians could only

imagine.

The use of evocative and offensive curse-words also gives the soldiers a crude sense of humor so that they can laugh together under difficult life-threatening circumstances. As the soldiers were drinking in Ireland while waiting for their flight, O’Leary joked to Corporal Weissert, “Look at you, smiling like a faggot in a dick tree,” (Phillips, 45) O’Leary’s joke would have been seen as offensive to a civilian but to the soldiers, the joke was acceptable and even laughable. Crude words gave the soldiers a chance to laugh on the battlefield even while under such extreme pressures.

"Redeployment" by Phil Klay showed how a marine returning from war copes with difficult situations through the character Sargent Price who used a series of military colloquialisms as a defensive shield against the horrors he had witnessed while in war and the state of mind who he had developed. Although 'grunt speak' may be interpreted as rude, insensitive or even disrespectful, in the military, it becomes a language for other soldiers uniting them into close family bonds. Although Sergeant Price was away from the battleground in the safety of his own home, he had adopted the war and its need to be ever vigilant with his men.